WESTERN METALS LIMITED
Tanzania, An Emerging Uranium Province
WMT - Uranium Conference - Mr George Bauk, Managing Director
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00PM
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Mr George Bauk
Thu, 24 Jul 2008
04:00PM Australia/NSW
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WESTERN METALS LIMITED (WMT)
ASX code: WMT
Website: http://www.westernmetals.com.au
Industry: Materials
Principal Activities:
Mineral exploration
Address:
100 Railway Road, Spectrum Building, Unit 7
SUBIACO
WA
Phone: 08 6380 3600
Fax: 08 9382 8022
Executives & Directors
Dr Chris Greig , Non Exec. Chairman
Mr George Bauk , Managing Director
Mr Marco Cardaci , Director
Mr Geoff Chapman , Executive Director
Mr Peter Smith , Executive Director
Mr Morgan Ball , CFO
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Company ASX Announcements
Company ASX announcements can be viewed on the ASX website.
Announcements from the preceding six months are shown below.
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WESTERN METALS LIMITED (WMT) Events
Australia/NSW
WESTERN METALS LIMITED (WMT)
| Western Metals earns 60% interest in Tanzanian uranium JV | Wed, 2 Jul 2008 |
| Western Metals Recommences Drilling in Tanzania | Thu, 22 May 2008 |
| Parys Mountain Historic Mineral Resource | Mon, 12 May 2008 |
| Investor Update - May 2008 | Mon, 12 May 2008 |
| Quarterly Cashflow Report | Wed, 30 Apr 2008 |
| Quarterly Activities Report | Wed, 30 Apr 2008 |
| Appendix 3B | Tue, 29 Apr 2008 |
| Becoming a substantial holder for SRZ | Thu, 24 Apr 2008 |
| Western Metals to acquire advanced UK Copper-Zinc Project | Thu, 10 Apr 2008 |
| Trading Halt | Tue, 8 Apr 2008 |
Please note: This company appears on this website as a result of its listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. Boardroom Radio does not claim any association with any company listed on this site.
INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE BAUK, MANAGING DIRECTOR, WESTERN METALS LIMITED (WMT)
“Tanzania, An An Emerging Uranium Province”
http://www.brr.com.au/event/48506
THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2008, 4:00 PM
BRR You will now be hearing from Mr. George Bauk, the managing director of Western Metals on a uranium project in Tanzania. George, over to you.
10
WMT Thank you. It’s about taking you through a presentation today on Tanzania uranium projects. We’ll be focused on that particular project area and the theme with an emerging uranium province. I suppose in brief, Western Metals Is an emerging resource company. We’re developing a portfolio world class
15 projects, we have quality team with the vast and various experiences and expertise in strategy acquisitions exploration operations and I’ll take you through that with a little bit more detail later. We’re well funded, a company with $25 million in the bank and we’re (inaudible) (00:00:40) to getting in number of acquisition potentials and the main one on the plate at the moment
20 is the due diligence, one that we’re taking on the mountain project in Northern Wales which hopefully will be nearing completion shortly.
Just a little bit of history about Western Metals, the current board and management took control of Western Metals back in June of 2006 contains
25 new uranium projects (inaudible) (00:01:02) explored there was a half (inaudible) (00:01:04) filled program that was undertaken back in May 2006. We had the test mining tin project, $3 million in the bank and a couple of guys.
30 Out of last two years, we have now increased that portfolio. Our Tanzania uranium project has increased in land source from three and a half thousands square kilometers to nearly fourteen thousand square kilometers. We’ve completed a stream program over that 2-year period in Tanzania of approximately $4.5 million, we’ve built on a based metals portfolio covering
35 copper, nickel and zinc in areas of Australia, Canada, Peru and the United States. We’ve increased the tin, taken the team three of us to a team of 24; includes four geoscientists as well as they’re based both in Australia and Tanzania.
40 As I mentioned before, we’ve increased that treasury to $25 million through a number of capital raisings in like 2006 and early 2007 and grown a lot of capitalization the company for $6 million to $46 million. A good achievement but I think we’re the case of where we’re going where want to be.
45 Introducing the Board of Management, we have five board members including myself and two others as the Executive Directors. We also have Chris Greig and Michael (inaudible) (00:02:21), these are Non- Executive Directors. Amongst this is an enormous amount of experience and expertise in both running companies as well as being involved in the resale sector and various roles in companies such as Western Mining. We’re also supplemented by fantastic executive team covering a broad range of experiences, a lot of them focused on geoscience area which you’d expect as an exploration company and this, of course, cover a of variety of faculties inside the geosciences
5 including geophysicists, geochemists, exploration geologists, and economic geologists. We also have a commercial team headed up by Morgan Ball, our CFO and company secretary.
Corporate profile, we have 622 million shares on issue, a number of list and
10 unlisted options. At the close of business yesterday, we had a market capitalization of $46 million, again $25 million in the bank and our top twenty shareholders hold approximately 20% of the company. Yesterday, we announced and drew results from the first (inaudible) (00:03:26) that were drawn from the mine program this year in Tanzania, withdrew some corporate
15 running mineralization with half long best results in the announcement yesterday which includes $12 million to 670 parts per million, three majors in 690 and two majors in 5800 parts per million, really exciting results. Just briefly, as most of you are fully aware or familiar with uranium industry and the drawbacks of it, supply and demand which really underpins way around
20 people are predicting price to aid the style will go foreword and you can see in this slide that this is gonna be a shortfall of production for mines versus reactor requirements. That’s a very well known story. Reactors…a substantial amount of reactors is being planned as significant amount in China, India, Southern Africa and also some parts of Europe.
25
So Tanzania…this is a picture of our current drilling program being undertaken at the moment by our grandfathers as we speak, well, take a step back and we’ll just give you an overview in putting in perspective of the way we are currently exploring. If you look at Southern Africa as outlined in this
30 graph…. in this chart through outside…. Southern Africa’s rich in uranium, it’s a significant contributor of world supply. I think, in general, it’s fair to say it’s an under explored region for uranium. It has a range of deposit styles and for much (inaudible) (00:04:53) in Tanzania we focus on the Karoo Basin. Again, you can see here in the brown that a significant portion of Southern Africa has
35 the Karoo Basin going through it. You can see that the Karoo Basin has hard dried near surface. The major success story is the Paladin Kayelekera project which is currently under construction in Malawi, You seen recently the exciting results that made resources at Tanzania is presenting from its Mkuju River Project which exist in the north of us and has a really potential for light
40 cost extraction in this area.
And you can see that….. I’d like now to zoom in and just focus in on a the project that we’re involved in Tanzania. Just briefly, you can see that Southern Tanzania is really dominated by few explorers namely ourselves in
45 joint venture with Uranium Resources PLC, Major Resources and Uranex. Between these companies we hold that a fairly substantial component of the Karoo that’s being met in Tanzania and have been the most active in our search for uranium in Southern Tanzania.
It is an emerging uranium province, we’ve had successful result… matrices having successful results in all these stage from Uranex, they are showing encouraging results. There are areas identified back in the 70s and might certainly add these a one kilometer along spaced airborne radiometrics
5 survey flown within Southern part of Tanzania, Uranex were active in the area and pretty much in the early 80s largely driven by uranium products that was a real exit of exploration activity for uranium in Southern Tanzania. In 2006, 15 those re-entry in Tanzania of uranium explorers owned predominantly by the people that I mentioned on the chart. First drilling was undertaken in
10 2007 and I mean, recently did we see a slide in (inaudible) (00:06:46) resources that they’re forecasting production in 2010. I mean that’s just a remarkable success story in such a short time frame and is a really encouraging for all the explorers in Southern Tanzania.
15 To give you a little bit, a bit of a brief earlier I gave you about Tanzania, that’s a side of a multi patterned democracy, the government’s very supportive for the resource industry, it’s the third largest gold producer in Africa with significant gold production and the like Victoria Falls Wood area in the northern part of Tanzania, you’ve got Barrick Anglo and recently mining as
20 the key gold producers in the country. A (inaudible) (00:07:25) that came in last year highlighted Tanzania as 12th lowest in country mining investment risk. I think that it reflect the way we see Tanzania as a country to invest in and holds a lot of prosperity for ourselves and many others. It’s an excellent perspective geological terrain, a lot of commodities are being explored for in
25 Tanzania and a lot of activity underway in Southern Tanzania. But there has been a real limited historical exploration activity for uranium. You can see the uranium provinces now emerging. Okay, so that project area…. these map here highlight again the areas in which we’re exploring in. We cover some 48,000 square kilometers and it’s largely focused on the Karoo sequence in
30 Southern Tanzania. With the mining activity that has been undertaken in the country has been through the development and of Tanzanian office back in May 2007. The office is headed by Livinus Kombura, our country manager, a Tanzanian and geologist by qualification. That team there consist of 10 people, six of them geologist, logistics coordinators, finance support as well
35 as a team being supported by local communities with specific contractors required to support that drilling and ground-based exploration program.
It is essential to ensure that we have a license to operate as any exploration company would in the particular reference when you’re exploring for uranium
40 with the sensitivity that comes with this commodity. It’s essential to focus on safety and environment and we have done that from day one. We’ve implemented sound safety management policies and procedures, we’ve introduced radiation safety policies and training, we deployed an expert out of South Australia to undertake radiation training in the field with both all our
45 staff from Tanzania and Australia, as well as any consultants and contractors we used, we report in order and we’ve got an excellent safety record.
From an environmental perspective, we have a management policy and procedures that implies strong supervision, we have training courses, we conduct baseline studies, we also report on our environmental disturbance, we audit and we have a compliance (inaudible) (00:09:56) officer and that picture there on the top left-hand corner just shows you the regrowth we’re already seeing in the areas we disturbed back in 2007 so excellent outcomes.
5
On top of that, critical to get communities support, again, a license to operate (inaudible) (00:10:14). We employ local people both around our project area for supporting our exploration programs as well as, currently. I am in charge of the Tanzanian office that has employed Tanzanian nationals. We’ve
10 engaged the community through various meetings and forums to ensure that….we ensure that they understand the activities around the take, we also support life of communities with school buildings supporting a local orphanage. We’ve also undertaken a program (inaudible) (00:10:47) vacation employment with the university, member of the Chamber of Mines
15 and another important thing is we buy a lot of local goods and services where appropriate and it’s important to really support life of communities.
Looking at the height view of all we have done in the country as I said in the start of the presentation, we spent $4.5 million in Tanzania. A lot of that has
20 gone into exploration activities. We’ve undertaken a number of higher resolution airborne geophysical surveys, we’ve, to this point, completed 198 RC holes for about 11.5 thousand meters averaging about 60 meters in depth. We’ve done an extensive amount of surface trenching and a number of other ground-based geophysical surveys, sampling, petrology, and in order
25 for us to try and cover as many of the 14,000 square kilometers as we can, we’re faced with logistical challenges, remoteness and so we do this by being supported by helicopter to accelerate our exploration programs.
Okay, so (inaudible) (00:11:52) Mtonya prospect. You can see there, that is
30 encircled. Back in May 2006, Joe Drake-Brockman visited the area. It was the Henri prospect that he named that was identified as the number one target in that area based on 1978 airborne radiometric survey. Sampled a the number of rocks and the highest rock chip sample came back at 980 parts per million uranium.
35
We followed that up in August 2006 with service geophysics which really highlighted the Henri prospect as well as identified a number of other prospects. We then entered into some trenching which gave us some additional stunning results including 2% uranium and basically at that point in
40 time we started progress on determining our next steps including drilling based on the seasonal condition and climate associated at that part of southern Tanzania. The rains usually start around November, so we went straight into planning to understand whatever needs and requirements were from gaining land access as well as getting drilling contractors in place to
45 start drilling in May 2007. We conducted four months of drilling in 2007 and started again in May 2008.
Our detailed airborne radiometric surveys highlighted the trend that covers some 7 kilometers by 2 kilometers. We conducted four-phase drilling to this point in time. We’ve updated multi-stacked zones of subsurface mineralisation. The drilling to date has been on a broad-spaced reconnaissance nature and we’ve been targeting a number of areas that you can see, that have been identified on that trend and in all those areas we’ve
5 identified significant uranium mineralization.
If you just look at Henri, which is the first area we visited back in August 2006 and first drilling activity in May 2007. To the bottom right hand side, you can see cross section that was created at the first drilling back in 1997 where you
10 can see the areas that have the identification of subsurface, multi-stacked uranium mineralisation. You can see the sandstones and mudstones and there’s some really encouraging intersections there including the peak intersection at 7 meters at 1200 parts per million.
15 Turning to North Grandfather. We visited Grandfather in about October 2007. The results of that trenching along the Grandfather anomaly identified some really encouraging and outstanding trenching results. And you can see them up there including 1.2 meters at 7,000 parts per million. Again (inaudible) (00:14:30) weather kept approaching, we were unable to start drilling there
20 until June this year. We had to put in some land access and some road access which has only taken up to Moysten back in 2007. Drillers came back in and we commence drilling there in Henri in May, got the road up to Grandfather in June, commenced drilling there in June and we hope to drill through to mid July or August. We have received assay results for the first
25 four holes. Those results were mentioned earlier in the presentation, encouraging results. Those white holes on the top right hand corner are the holes that (inaudible) (00:15:11) have been drilled or planned to be drilled by August and we have not yet received drilling results for those.
30 So from a regional target perspective, that is Mtonya, we’ve also been looking at some other parts of our (inaudible) and the two areas that we identified, probably the next best targets on the properties include Eland and Foxy. In terms of Foxy, the mineralisation there is similar to Mtonya. Grab samples that were obtained as part of the helicopter reconnaissance supported
35 programming in late 2007 at a peak of 1.3% (inaudible). The radiometric anomaly indicates a strike of greater than 400 meters. We’re currently going through the prices identifying what’s required to get road access in there and we’re planning to be drilling there in the third quarter or this quarter 2008. Eland, on the other hand, is a different opportunity for us which is really
40 exotic. It’s actually great place for mineralisation. When the guys visit Eland back in late 2007, they took some grab samples, paid grab samples of 1000 parts per million. Our in-house mineralogist had a look at some of the samples taken from the property back in 2007 and really sees a lot of opportunity associated with the mineralisation with this particular prospect.
45 We’ve just completed about four weeks of ground-based activity in the area. We’ve taken further samples. They’re currently in the labs for analysing and the guys indicated the radiometric anomaly there is again over 400 meters strike length and just (inaudible) 16:52 cover and unsure of the total extent of it. We’re hoping to drill this year but maybe Eland will be drilled in the second quarter of 2009.
So what’s left for Western Metals in Tanzania for the balance of this year? A
5 lot of activities, as mentioned earlier. We need to get it all done by mid to late November. Drilling will continue in all that prospects through July to October around Grandfather as well as some other areas in the Mtonya project area. We’ll move to Ruvuma area. We will drill in Foxy and hopefully Eland as well as looking at many drilling program in Pedro in the third or fourth quarter this
10 year. A substantial amount of ground-based followup work will also be undertaken during this period.
In summary, we’re exploring an emerging uranium province. It’s an exciting part of the world to be. We’re getting very encouraging results. We have the
15 capability of a company to take these projects through to production. We’re a company that delivers on promises made and we’re well funded for future programs. Again with $25 million in the bank and given the current climate, it’s a great place to be to make sure that we have the fundings to take our projects forward. Thank you very much.
20
BRR If you’ve got any questions for George about this presentation or about Western Metals generally, please send through an e-mail. The address is brr@brr.com.au or alternatively, you can use the Contact Us button on the brr homepage. Thanks for listening.
INTERVIEW CONCLUDED
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